As a student, I've had a part time job for 5 years. I started out as a naive 17 year old, trying really hard to impress my boss and I eventually got a promotion. From there, I have had complete control over the warehouse during weekend shifts.
Well I naively used to do as my boss asked. but as I got older and I became less naive, I realized that the sad reality is that literally everybody is expendable. So my mentality changed. I always made sure the job got done, but I stopped enforcing rules and I stopped being on peoples asses. Its literally pointless, the job always gets done at the end of the day, what's the point of making everyone miserable. So I made sure that work became fun. job got done, not always top tier quality, but done regardless. and we had fun.
Nothing made me cringe harder than attending the “management meeting”. Those bosses are literally the most bland, unfunny and egotistical group of circle jerkers I've ever seen. The speak down on people, and act like they know everything and are better than everyone.
Anyways, they eventually caught on that I wasn't taking the job as seriously as they would have liked me to. They told me I had to start enforcing rules really strictly and that they would always have my back if I decided to send someone home. If I took a decision of any-kind, regardless of if I was right or wrong, they said I would be backed. I was told that as a man, I should assert myself and make sure that my presence intimidates people enough so that they stay productive at all times. WTF. Fuck that.
Few months later, the same person who said that came up to me, threatened me with the implication that she would try to find reasons to fire me, prompted by the fact that my lunch break was too long. then she unprovokedly told me that everybody who’s defied her, no longer worked here. Wow.
Turns out that this intervention was provoked by a snitch, and that everyone in management have hated my guts for the last who knows how long
Few days later, I was demoted. No explanation. Plus my file is blank, I never got wrote up once.
Luckily I know my rights and ill do my best to get them for constructive dismissal. Im actually graduating and was planning on leaving soon anyways. Good on them for giving me grounds for a possible severance, ill definitely shoot my shot.